Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

One question should always be asked to give this matter context—that is, a question about the history of the economy that is handed to an incoming government in this nation. The question you should ask is: in the history of our Federation has there ever been a better economy handed to an incoming government than the one of November last year? I ask the government: in the history of our country, has there ever been an economy with lower unemployment and higher growth than was handed to the government in November last year?

All we ever hear about is working families, and that is a good thing, because they are the backbone of this nation. Let me give a little bit of context for working families. Let us compare working families of the former Labor government to the previous Howard government. All that Mr Rudd ever says is that the Howard government did not care about working families. Let us have a look at the records and compare them. Let us have a brief look at unemployment in the time of the Hawke and Keating governments. More than one million people were unemployed during the time of the Hawke and Keating governments. Then what happened? Unemployment was halved by the incoming Howard government. So much for working families! You cannot have a working family if you do not have work. The unemployment rate was halved by the incoming Howard government. How is that for working families!

Let us look for a moment at real wages. During the time of the Hawke and Keating governments—during the time of the accord, during the time of high unemployment—what happened to real wages? For working families, real wages under the Hawke and Keating governments actually fell by nearly two per cent. That was the legacy of the previous Labor government.